Interim associate vice president for academic affairs/director of the Online Learning Center, Webster University

Since traveling more than 8,000 miles from Vietnam to Missouri in 1975, Thao Dang-Williams has planted deep roots in St. Louis. Her passion is local education — at area community colleges, universities and even the Ritenour School District, where her children attend school.

She doesn’t remember life in Vietnam (She was 4 years old when her family moved here to escape the Vietnam War), but she has taken an interest in her native land over the years. Dang-Williams’ father, a math teacher in Vietnam who later repaired air conditioners in Missouri, for years tutored Vietnamese students in his spare time. Dang-Williams, 42, helped by tutoring English, and also assisted the students in filling out statements of purpose and financial aid forms for college.

She then earned a master’s degree and a doctoral degree in education from Saint Louis University in 2006. For her doctoral project, she examined the importance of education to the so-called Vietnamese boat people, a refugee group with whom her family identifies, and compared it with other first generation immigrant groups.

She taught grammar, punctuation and research writing at Ranken Technical College, St. Louis Community College, SLU and Webster University, where she’s been since 2011. As part of her current job, she’s helping to expand Webster University’s dual credit program with St. Louis Public Schools. She also teaches a course on communication in culture.

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